Epic's Gears of War cost Microsoft a Billion Bucks

In one of Major Nelson’s recent podcasts with some of the crew from Epic, an epic secret was released – Epic was the reason that the Xbox 360 has 512MB of RAM instead of 256MB. That fact alone cost Microsoft a billion dollars. Mark Rein fills us in:

“So we argued and argued, and what Tim did is he actually sent a screenshot of what Gears of War would look like if we only had 256 megs of memory. So the day they made the decision, we were apparently the first developer they called; we were at Game Developers Conference, was it two years ago, and then I got a call from the chief financial officer of MGS and he said ‘I just want you to know you cost me a billion dollars’ and I said, ‘we did a favour for a billion gamers’.”

About the Author

Deejay Knight, Editor/FounderDeejay has been a gamer since the Atari 2600, has wrestled–and defeated–alligators with only his toes, and once aligned all the planets in the Solar System by uttering the words "Coo Coo Ka-Choo". In his sleep.
He currently bides his time behind the scenes here at GAMINGtruth.com, streaming at http://www.twitch.tv/deejayknight and teaching.